Sede Vacante

Following an emotional farewell in Rome and his withdrawal to Castel Gandolfo, the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI took effect at 8PM in Italy (2PM Eastern US Time). May God grant him many years in his retirement.

Traveling

No blogging tomorrow.

Major banks aid in payday loans banned by states

 Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based payday lenders that offer short-term loans with interest rates sometimes exceeding 500 percent.

With 15 states banning payday loans, a growing number of the lenders have set up online operations in more hospitable states or far-flung locales like Belize, Malta and the West Indies to more easily evade statewide caps on interest rates.

While the banks, which include giants like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, do not make the loans, they are a critical link for the lenders, enabling the lenders to withdraw payments automatically from borrowers’ bank accounts, even in states where the loans are banned entirely. In some cases, the banks allow lenders to tap checking accounts even after the customers have begged them to stop the withdrawals.

“Without the assistance of the banks in processing and sending electronic funds, these lenders simply couldn’t operate,” said Josh Zinner, co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, which works with community groups in New York.

Read the rest here.

Banks are the enemy.

Thinking about a cruise? Caveat emptor...

What does a cruise line owe you when your dream vacation turns into a nightmare? As passengers who were trapped aboard the ill-fated Carnival Triumph for five days earlier this month are going to learn – it’s not very much.

The cruise line has very limited liability even when things go terribly wrong. This is all spelled out in the ticket contract.

“The Carnival passenger contract is standard,” said Steve Danishek, a travel industry analyst based in Seattle. “They protect the cruise lines from all sorts of liability and make it incredibly difficult for a passenger to take any legal action against them.”

Carnival’s ticket contract specifically bans class action lawsuits.

“All disputes other than personal injury, illness or death must go through arbitration and they get to choose the arbitration company,” said Professor Martin Davies, director of the Tulane Maritime Law Center. “That means if your claim is simply, ‘you ruined my vacation,’ then this has to go to arbitration.”

Read the rest here.

Axios!

And many years to newly elected Patriarch Neophyte of Bulgaria.

Raul Castro announces retirement in 2018

HAVANA - Cuban leader Raul Castro announced on Sunday he would step down from power after his second term as president ends in 2018, and the new parliament named a 52-year-old rising star to become his first vice president and most visible successor.

Castro, 81, made the announcement in a nationally broadcast speech shortly after the Cuban National Assembly elected him to a second five-year term in the opening session of the new parliament.

"This will be my last term," Castro said.

Read the rest here.

Pope Benedict Allows Early Conclave

Pope Benedict has changed Catholic Church rules to allow the conclave that will choose his successor to be held earlier if cardinals are ready, the Vatican said Monday.

In a motu proprio – in effect, a personal decree – he introduced modifications to the laws governing the timing of the secret election, which had been due to begin on March 15 or later.

Pope Benedict XVI officially stands down from his role on Feb 28, having resigned earlier this month citing his own failing health.

A conclave – the behind-closed-doors ballot of cardinals – cannot begin within 15 days of the papacy becoming vacant; in this case, March 15.

Read the rest here.

Senior British Cardinal Resigns

LONDON -- Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric has resigned amid allegations of inappropriate behavior made by priests.

The Vatican said Monday that Pope Benedict XVI had formally accepted the resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh. The Observer newspaper reported Sunday that the Vatican had been notified of allegations of inappropriate behavior stretching back 30 years.

Three priests in Scotland, as well as a former priest, have lodged complaints to the Vatican's ambassador to Britain and demanded O'Brien's immediate resignation, according to the newspaper.

Read the rest here.

Federal Reserve Paper Warns of Possible Monetary Crisis

A new paper for the US Monetary Policy Forum and published by the Fed warns that the institution's capital base could be wiped out "several times" once borrowing costs start to rise in earnest.

A mere whiff of inflation or more likely stagflation would cause a bond market rout, leaving the Fed nursing escalating losses on its $2.9 trillion holdings. This portfolio is rising by $85bn each month under QE3. The longer it goes on, the greater the risk. Exit will become much harder by 2014.

Such losses would lead to a political storm on Capitol Hill and risk a crisis of confidence. The paper -- "Crunch Time: Fiscal Crises and the Role of Monetary Policy" -- is co-written by former Fed governor Frederic Mishkin, Ben Bernanke's former right-hand man.

Read the rest here.

Israel: Ultra-Orthodox Jews fear loss of political power

On a cool winter evening in 2012, a senior delegation of ultra-Orthodox rabbis and politicians — members of Israel’s Ashkenazi religious party, United Torah Judaism, and the Sephardic religious party, Shas — convened in Bnei Brak, a predominantly Haredi city near Tel Aviv. The host was a 98-year-old rabbi, Aharon Shtainman, spiritual leader of the Ashkenazi Haredi stream. The objective was to form an Ashkenazi-Sephardic bloc to prevent the conscription of yeshiva students into the Israel Defense Forces following the expiration of the Tal Law, which currently exempts them from these obligations.

Exiting the meeting, some of the delegates announced that they were willing to go as far as to sacrifice their lives to ensure that Haredi students may continue to study the Torah instead of joining the military.

This extreme rhetoric might sound like an expression of strength and confidence. But it’s not. These ultra-Orthodox parties are, rather, at a point of desperation, concerned about the future of their political power within Israel. Pressure, rather than theology, is the element that has united these vastly different parties in recent months — the result of last January’s general elections for the Knesset, growing public pressure to integrate Haredi men into the military and the labor force, and trends within the Haredi world itself.

The election sent a clear message to Benjamin Netanyahu, insisting that he form a coalition to address the middle class demand for social and economic justice and equality. It’s a task that would become easier without Haredi parties occupying key positions in the coalition and working to secure Haredi financial interests.

Read the rest here.

Lent: The countdown begins

Pre-Lent begins tomorrow. Starting today there is no fasting until Wednesday March 6th. On a related note I observe that for the first time I can remember the feast of St. Patrick is not in the middle of Great Lent falling instead on Forgiveness Sunday (the Sunday of Cheesefare). And due to the extraordinarily late Easter this year, the Apostles Fast will be extremely short for those on the traditional calendar and nonexistent for those on the reformed calendar.

Do you hate flying as much as I do?

Do you long for a more civilized way of getting from point A to point B? If so, this will probably make you sick.

The above is a sailing roster for May and June indicating steamship line,ships and their ports of call as well as sailing dates. It would likely have been posted on a travel board in a hotel or similar venue. The year is not stated but based on the names of ships and other clues I have a high degree of confidence that it is from the spring of 1924. You may have to play around with the right click function on your mouse to see it full sized or try clicking here.

See here for a travel guide (full text with photos) from 1910.

Bob Woodward: The White House is lying about who came up with the sequester

The finger-pointing began during the third presidential debate last fall, on Oct. 22, when President Obama blamed Congress. “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said. “It is something that Congress has proposed.”

The White House chief of staff at the time, Jack Lew, who had been budget director during the negotiations that set up the sequester in 2011, backed up the president two days later.

“There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger,” Lew said while campaigning in Florida. It “was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure.”

The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book “The Price of Politics” shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.

Read the rest here.

I love the way Woodward uses every possible linguistic alternative to avoid saying what he actually means... the Obama administration has been lying through their teeth.

The manufactured crisis of sequester

Even during this desultory economic recovery, one industry thrives — the manufacture of synthetic hysteria. It is, however, inaccurate to accuse the Hysteric in Chief of crying “Wolf!” about spending cuts under the sequester. He is actually crying “Hamster!”

As in: Batten down the hatches — the sequester will cut $85 billion from this year’s $3.6 trillion budget! Or: Head for the storm cellar — spending will be cut 2.3 percent! Or: Washington chain-saw massacre — we must scrape by on 97.7 percent of current spending! Or: Chaos is coming because the sequester will cut a sum $25 billion larger than was just shoveled out the door (supposedly, but not actually) for victims of Hurricane Sandy! Or: Heaven forfend, the sequester will cut 47 percent as much as was spent on the AIG bailout! Or: Famine, pestilence and locusts will come when the sequester causes federal spending over 10 years to plummet from $46 trillion all the way down to $44.8 trillion! Or: Grass will grow in the streets of America’s cities if the domestic agencies whose budgets have increased 17 percent under President Obama must endure a 5 percent cut!

Read the rest here.

Cardinal Mahoney: 'i'm a scapegoat'

Los Angeles' retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, who was rebuked last month for his handling of the sex-abuse crisis, suggests he was "scapegoated" in a blog post ahead of two important dates: his Saturday deposition in a lawsuit alleging that the church hierarchy protected a priest accused of molesting children and his trip to Rome to help pick the next pope.

The high-profile "prince of the church" is at the center of an outcry over several scandal-tainted cardinals being allowed to help choose who will succeed Pope Benedict XVI at next month's conclave at the Vatican.

Ireland's Sean Brady, Belgium's Godfried Danneels and Philadelphia's Justin Rigali have all been pilloried in the Italian press over allegations they failed to protect children from pedophiles -- but it's Mahony who has drawn the most ire.

Read the rest here.

San Bernadino Hires a New Manager

LOS ANGELES - The bankrupt city of San Bernardino has hired a new city manager who, according to court filings, has twice declared personal bankruptcy and was recently ousted from the board of a small community's water company after being sued by shareholders.

The city council voted unanimously on Tuesday night to hire Allen J. Parker, 71, as its city manager on an annual salary of almost $222,000. He replaces an interim city manager who resigned last month because, according to friends, she was exasperated by the city's internal divisions.

Read the rest here.

Beware fake seafood

When you sit down for a meal at your favorite sushi restaurant, the bite at the end of those chopsticks probably isn’t what you think it is. A new report sheds light on this dirty secret of the food industry: Cheap fish is widely passed off as more expensive varieties, at customers’ expense.

One third of the 1,215 samples collected from grocery stores and restaurants by advocacy group Oceana were actually a different kind of fish than what the seller purported. The group found instances of fake fish across the country, and at all kinds of establishments. Nearly half of the 674 retailers Oceana visited sold mislabeled fish.

Read the rest here.

Not a big seafood guy, but this was disturbing.

'Miracle' providers claim constitutional protection (quackery)

An Ashland couple accused of peddling over the Internet a diluted version of industrial bleach as an elixir for everything from earaches to cancer claims the federal government has no jurisdiction over their operation because it is a private health "association."

Federal prosecutors labeled their claim "misguided."

In federal court filings, defendants Louis Daniel Smith and Karis Delong claim they have constitutional protections to make and sell "Miracle Mineral Supplement" through their online company, Project GreenLife, because their products are offered only to members of a "First Amendment Private Health Care Association."

Smith, 42, and Delong, 38, claim the First and 14th Amendments protect these associations because they are private and not part of the public domain over which agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration have power, so federal health laws don't apply, according to court filings seeking to get their case dismissed.

Project GreenLife shipped Miracle Mineral Supplement and other products only to members of the association, a distinction that frees them from the scrutiny of the FDA, which is mandated to protect public health, Smith and Delong argue.

Read the rest here.

San Francisco: 572 city workers paid more than governor

No fewer than 572 San Francisco city workers and executives made more than Gov. Jerry Brown last year.

More than 1,500 city workers made more than state Attorney General Kamala Harris.

And that's without overtime.

"That's pretty staggering," said Tom Dalzell, head of the California Citizens Compensation Commission, which sets pay for state lawmakers.

Read the rest here.